The Science of Him
by DaphneGrace
Summary: Hello, my name is John Hamish Holmes, last name courtesy to my husband, Sherlock Holmes. A detective mastermind, a deduction maniac, a sociopath, and a freak. But here, in 221B Baker Street, I have the honor to observe the other side of him. The improbable side of this improbable idol of the deduction world. Let's witness how the great detective divorces himself from his profession
1. The Man

Chapter One

The Man.

I know you are watching me from a certain angle, I always know that, giving that I'm a medical doctor recently returned from a long journey in Afghanistan, and sharp enough to tell different injuries and situations apart, I can tell that you are bored and confused with plain emotion; or literally anything at all.

My life is a venture when it's bloody violent and goes back to bland when it's a settled norm.

I can tell by your collarbone that you just finished eating your lasagna on a dinner table with blue cloth, and you weren't totally satisfied by it. You are also desperate for a good book, and you hope someone could read it off to you in a manger, etc. etc.

OK, I'm exceptionally bad at businesses like this, and I know that, at least not a bit good as someone.

Someone named Sherlock Holmes, and according to anyone at all. He is not just a high functioning sociopath, but also a downright freak.

Life is the biggest thing that could happen upon a human being, and you only get the chance once. You live at a constant, certain, and homogeneous cycle.

This may not be every single case, but broad enough that you can just assume how the process runs.

Who will assume that, by the time of his or her death that the failure could've happened to anyone else at the same time. Who would assume that so-called immortals would suffer from the same fate as mortals like us, with all his glories and accomplishments behind his head?

Life is just a child, like Sherlock used to be, they were equivalent to each other. A child with a pair of cheekbones high enough to attract anyone within 10 miles radius. Like a hopeless psychopath, it will never ever give up; you lose that last spark of fire, the whole world went dark, and you are the ending of the whole game, and life will play on, just like the legend of Sherlock Holmes under the spotlight of publications and newspapers, it will live on forever more, under the moonlight and beside your fireplace.

But, to hell with all the blandness before he comes along. Life has given me some bloody amazing experiences that I will never live again.

Oh glorious, oh legendary, oh perfect. There he sat, stubbornly, no need to pour him a cup of tea, just a story would be enough, and he will take a little time to catch you the key of the event.

When the concept of one's life dies off, people will notice that it was just a little child with a funny disguise, and its disappearance was merely just child murder. It's weak, ignorant, and nothing.

Just like the freak, he is next to nothing when it comes to general ideas of normality. He thought the fact that the sun was the center of the solar system is as useless as the fact that zero is not one, and he thought clouds was part of the element table instead of gases. Am I skipping my mind again?

You can compare such a person to the broad idea of life, the evergreen leaf that will always be at its finest form. It does not have a rational mind; it simply defines the word rationality. It does not have complicated emotions, because its apprentices and followers always took their share away and used them up as fast as possible, just like those people did to Him, the Great Consulting Detective, The Inhumanly Smart Sherlock Holmes, The Freak. They always took away his emotions as if it doesn't exist, but no one knows how deep it hurts him. The greatest human being I have ever met.

His life goes on forever, because even after he dies (I doubt that he will because I don't think he's mortal), his glories and his works will live on; like a bloody hateful never-ending machine that he already is.

If logics and rationalities and deductions dominates pretty much the whole of his personality, that's not even half as much the meaning of existence. To me, Sherlock Holmes is nothing like the man I just described, and you might find it odd because I just said so many bad things about him. But, frankly, He is the most amazing man I have ever encountered in my whole life, which is in fact pretty much bleakness at its finest.

I was so alone, and I owed him so much. I was the bachelor inside my own little closet of mind before I admitted my heart. I still remember the thrill of the chase, the fierceness of blood pumping through my vain, and the heartbeat the speed of infinity. My life was strangely luminous because of him.

Rumors say that he is in love with Irene Adler, the lesbian dominatrix who rides on top of the royalty. He said that she is the woman, but that's when he is drunk and he was also doing the chicken dance when he speculates that, (co-ka-co-co-ka-co-CO-KA-COKA-COKA-CO!) Apparently you never trust a drunken man, for he who dances that type of dance is most likely living the most oblivious time of his life. Go back to the topic. To me, he is The Man, and I could not live a day without him.

I will let the rumors and gossips and legends about Irenlock survive, and live on forever and ever more. Because this world is not as flat as the Greeks thought, and acceptance is something we really need to learn.

For the sake of him and me, please do not spread the stories around, because one day you will fall hard on the ground, and the fire of the bottom of the pit will burn the heart out of you. My words and my perspective is as exclusive and narrow as that strange ally by your home country, and you won't be stupid enough to lease that ally away, or would you? (Ok, enjoy the complicated and confusing sarcasm of this sentence, and the cheapness and uselessness of my words.)

The story goes, the thread pulls, and the wheel turns. The story of the legendary consulting detective goes on and on, and the sound of the typewriter and the obviousness of the characteristics of a journalist are annoying. They always have wrinkles in their arm, especially when their deadlines are just a little way ahead. Their strained eyeballs are barely turning, writing fancy stories about a sociopath and a retired soldier. (Cue Laurie in front of her laptop) I am strangely observant, and please, please, please, do not mention this word to anyone else, because I am so ashamed that I just told you a lie.

Omit the bullshit about my induction and deduction talent.

Sherlock Holmes has the real thing, the only one on Earth, that is, the talent beyond any known or unknown psychic and fortune tellers in this world- the talent of which only he himself possesses.

When polices and detectives are done playing smart and are at the fringe of giving up a certain case, Sherlock will appear on their mind, like a piece of wind falling from the sky in a distorted form and they somehow seized it, contains no figure or volume, there is no general rule or guideline of his work. He was there when they needed him, taking only the matter of time of one plus one equals two over a brief dinner, and earns his pocket fee. This is the most understandable way I could describe of his job, because my mind was full of last night, when he gave me a little sugar to my coffee, my stone cold coffee, and I liked it. Now, replace the word coffee with heart. Go figure.

The case is often closed like a children's book, and he will be in the mood of plugging me some of his violin. He is a very good violin player, when he is done shooting bullets to that fancy wallpaper I bought him as a celebratory gift of our new "flatmateship". He was hyper that night, because he had just solved a murder case, and he even drew my face upon it, such simplicity it possesses that I could just laugh my arse off. It was a circle, two points, and an arch. I don't even remember if there's a nose.

His deduction is stunning enough that eventually people will just naturally assume that he is the one who planned the whole thing out beforehand. The complicated foul play, the seamless method, the revealing of the truth thousand miles away from possibility, and the details down to each and every pieces of evidence. But every time they tried to put a cufflink on his hands, he always points out the improbability of himself committing the crime. And although the whole thing always sounds like a perfect scheme, they often ended up releasing him because the reasons of his innocence are ample enough even though the precisions of his deductions are nowhere near a human's normal mind.

He is not guilty; he is just so far beyond brilliant that no one thinks being such a man is humanly possible; an improbability but a postulate.

But, like I said, he is a freak, and freaks are not human. He is not a psychopath, technically speaking, more like inhuman at its finest.

Thus, he barely has friends, and by barely I mean one, and that person is me. Because of one simple reason: No one is brave enough to get close to his radioactive vibes and his inhumanly strange habits. Shooting bullets to the wall in the middle of the night is one thing, but putting dead bodies where there's food is another. He is incomparable, however, compares to my other weirdoes, I'd rather have him than having anybody else on this planet.

The radiation literally elevates as the distant between you and him shortens, thus no one even get as far as shaking his hand, which is full of chemical stains and marks because of his passion at Art and Chemistry. But the lethalness of him could eat you raw, and licks your bone dry. It kills people's soul and leaves no trace at all.

Even that little boy called life is his enemy. He is gigantic in front of destiny. He is so brilliant that his own body is always betraying him by using all sorts of tricks to remind him that he is still human no matter what. He is the king of all the underestimations; because you won't believe how many seemingly undefeatable enemies he'd conquer by just talking to himself.

He is lethal, brutal and mentally unstable, even, when he became a specialist in crime.

Some says that he is an escaped patient from Hammersmith Mental Hospital, locates in the city where he spent most of his childhood, for he was so smart and so brilliant that people just naturally assume that some part of his brain must be missing for him to put that many stuff into his detective area. Some says all of those things combined is his shield, that he was just a detective story writer or something, and he spares his own free time by doing things he likes to do-fooling people around with those hardly probable sentences with a weird structure and grammar. It's like he was born to be a Victorian Era hero.

When Sherlock heard those rumors, he laughed like there is no tomorrow, and this is a very bad thing, because that day he laughed like the devil, or the son of the devil, because it was not the way that will warm your heart, it's the way that will split your heart in half and rip them into pieces. Not out of love, but out of confusion.

Just why the hell is he laughing about, when it was later revealed that this genius detective has its hilarious and foolish side too, but it was only in front of the people he cares, which you can count with almost no hand.

"Humans, not me, but the normal ones. They are always so funnily exposed or disguised that you couldn't even tell one face to another. Running about in their own hopeless circles, like a bunch of seals that needed water but found out they lived in a sealed tank. Shattering themselves in front of sugarcoated lies and mere desire, and never once are they aware of their mistakes. They have moods like a clown, and always wanted to take a stroll down the street, as if it could help with their gaining weights. They are so simple, tedious and hopeful, isn't it just hateful?"

I don't know if it's illegal to quote someone without telling his or her name, but I don't think there is an understanding issue going on here. We have became agreeable friends, I can see, for you can easily tell that this is pretty much one of the least annoying conversation I have with him. (I'm too tired of dealing with your slowness, my reader. Get it together, if you want to get to know him.)

Now I think we are getting somewhere, you already began to question my relationship with him, aren't you? We are really in a deep conversation right now, as if you are my therapist or something. You want to know about his sexuality, for every single details I speculated about him was somewhat attractive and charming to you, it even creates an irreversible force field that will pull you into something horrible out of nothing at all. You want to know one single word, a word that will often define the whole of one's sex:

His sexuality.

What is the person that he always likes? Not Irene Adler, not his Mommy or Daddy, the latter one whom he ensured his death and the first one living downstairs with a good-for-something oblivion. What is his sexuality?

The answer to this question is easy, he is asexual, which means he is not attracted to anyone beside the necessity of creation. But there is one person that he is strangely attracted to, one person that he understands the most, one person that will go crazy for him and die for him and dodge a bullet for him, and will conquer the world for him if he wants him to.

One person, who just told a lie about his husband's homosexuality.

It's me, hello, my name is Dr. John Hamish Holmes, or you can just call me John. Five months ago I became his, and this is the fact that does not seems to change by any means. I am that mysterious man with a bad leg and with another mysterious man with a funny hat.

You might have seen us before, we live in 221B Baker Street, the room upstairs where the light is always turned on, because Sherlock Holmes has a strange addiction to his passion about observing certain things in the bedroom even when he is off duty from being a private eye.

Life is a plane with so many congruent and crossed and zigzagged lines that it became so boring.

But thank God he exists, that my days finally had meanings.

Like a bloody animated 4-D cartoon.

"Is that what you normal people call it?"

Cue one normal afternoon. His words.

I love it. I just love it.


	2. The Unexpected Game

Chapter Two

The unexpected game.

Stop acting so happy, would you. It gets on my fucking nerve.

The weather is so gloomy that I can hardly endure the pain in my left shoulder, where that damn bullet find its comfort. I am not comfortable at all, in the contrary, my experience is far from enjoyable. I am a surgeon recently returned from Afghanistan, or you can call me the limping bachelor.

Nothing happens to me, not even human emotions. As if I was struck by the sound of the fly of the bullets, or the distorted images that linger in one particular area of my brain, I am sick. Sick from all those half-dying patients, sick from the war, sick from how people dies and how people tries to die even they have a chance of survival, and how those memories made me feel.

Sick, down there, through my spine, to the stomach, and back to my head.

I want to die, on one of those hospital beds with white sheets and blue pillows the color of the heaven, where I saved so many lives from their fringe. How ironic am I behaving, like a helpless teenager tries to end his life in a ridiculous way. But, what am I then, other than a defenseless slave of the past?

But I met a man yesterday, and he was so very weird that it's beyond the level of indescribability. And how wonderful, how delicious, how curious my heart was skipping beats nonstop when he flipped those dark brown curls of his. His cheekbones were so high and angular that I could cut my wrists on them, and his scarf, his dark blue cotton scarf. It was the color of the heaven, like those dead men's pillows. Why, just why am I thinking about those bloody dying men again!

I can assure you that he is no your ordinary type of man, because he knew about my family, my friends, my experience in war zones, and my gay sister all from observing various parts of my outfits and my phone. And he seems so humble about it that the whole thing just seems like a cunning act of arrogance. I was struck, again, speechless, like one of those dying men swallowing their last breath. Damn it! Stop thinking!

"That was some deduction! It was amazing!" I applauded.

"Elementary, my friend. In fact, lots of the most complicated cases I encountered always start with one plus one equals two, and ended with two simple variables. The more commonplace of the crime, however, the more complicated the situation, for nothing can compare to the individuality and uniqueness of human mind, and it requires quite some works to solve those-'masterpiece', I ought to say." His eyes never leave the microscope that I had to guess what the deuce his motivation was.

"So, you are a detective then? What kind?" It's not my habit to inquire people I don't know, but facing him, I don't really have a choice but ask, because he sends of this strange vibe that draws compliments while slapping you with refusal. And he is so mysterious and dark and lonesome and charming and…desirable.

To hell with it, I'm not hiding this from anyone anymore, but him.

"Consulting detective, the only one in the world, I invented this job, and damn those people who says I don't get paid. Of course I earn my pocket fee under some conditions, but most of the time gratitude is the best payment you could get these days, which basically packs with money. And from your face I could tell that because of the air conditioning is down, so the heat of midsummer London dazzles you more than ever. Would you like a cup of tea with me later, we can go to the tea house fifty steps from here, because you can always tell the best tea house from observing the bottom third of their doorknobs. And we can discuss who pays the electricity bill in the cab, which is waiting now downstairs." He remarks nonchalantly, with his left hand tucked in his coat pocket and right hand adjusting the microscope. He is focused, and damn he's even more mysterious.

"Wait…. Hold on a second. I just met you here because I'm here to wait for a friend, and now I'm paying your electricity bills?" I cried.

"Oh, I forget you are one of those stupid ones, I see," I am so at the fringe of punching that smooth face of his, but I afraid my knuckles would bleed, " My name is Sherlock Holmes. I am a detective with no regular salaries; the only satisfactory of life to me is solving crimes and deciphering problems. I need someone to share a flat with fairly good views, downtown area, nearly affordable by you and me together. Oh don't ask me how did I find out about the unemployment, no man in his twenties is using that kind of phone, old-styled and unfixed with scratches all over the tip of it, a hand-me-down from your sister, besides a man like you. A man who is in depression and not in the mood of shaving, constantly waiting for a call that never gets there, and owns an armchair. You do enjoy a little scratch in the face when you are having a cigarette with your left hand and your right arm on one of the arms of your chair with your phone. That's where half of the scratches came from. You couldn't throw it away because it has all the old numbers on them, but none of them reachable because you were gone for a long time and recently back. That's why those scratch marks are there and I assume that you are single?" He moved his glance away from the microscope and to me, and my heart was pumping blood so abnormally fast that I start to worry about my self.

"I choose not to respond to any stimuli from you because it hurts my self-esteem, which is already low. Ah, 221B Backer Street, two bed rooms and one bathroom, the rent is …I see, in reality, you are asking me to be your roommate." I glanced at a piece of note card on his lab table and there lays his narrow but cursive handwritten memo.

He is not so beyond human after all.

His pupils dilated for a quarter of second and backed to normal:" So is this a yes then? From your determined face and your steady hands I think you possess a nerve of steel. Lots of injuries?"

Oh, no, not again. " Y. Yes…. Lots of them, never enough. My medical experience is ample, because you are looking at a man who had seen some stuff."

He stopped his work and turned off his microscope. Eyes set on me and I feel like I'm on fire. Like real fire, the ones that they told you that will burn you, hard, and crush your spine to powders. I looked away, walked to the door, and opened it in a hustle.

We crawled into the cab that smells like cucumber and sat in opposite sides without a word spoken. I'm fighting off an urge to grab his curls and ask for his numbers, but I could never gather my courage to even get close to him. He is so distant, like some government secret agent of some sort, or some undercover member of a dark organization. But he is at the side of the angel; I can tell by his pale facial feature, that he constantly stays up late to solve crimes.

Sherlock, what an old-fashioned name for a youngster like him, and what in heaven's name is this guy's intention of wanting me, a normal half-paid surgeon, to move in with him? Is he on some sorts of drug that makes smart people like him become stupid? Or is he kidnapping me? But I don't have anything for him, and what would he blackmail me for? Either ways, the matter seems like a hard one, and maybe only a consulting detective could figure this out, which is a term I am still struggling to understand.

Just when I started trying to drift away the minutes by checking on my phone, the cab came to a halt, and the cabbie spoke in a strange way that seems to echo off the structure of the car, the sound of a middle aged man:" Baker Street, Sir."

"Thank you for your service, here's your money." Sherlock Holmes leaned forward and tilted his body through the gap of the passenger and driver seats, and the smell of his coat was so close that I could literally hear them colliding with air molecules.

"You are arrested." Then it's the click of the cuffs, definitely done by a person who worked alongside with the police and steadfast with his profession. I woke up from my temporary nap that lasted two seconds and looked at the direction of the voice with disbelief.

It was the driver with the cuffs and Sherlock Holmes with the victor's smile.

"How… How did you figure this out? You are a detective? You with the police? How did you find out I'm the murderer?"

"Bulge in your left pocket, shivering hands, old but clean clothes and grayish eyes, cab driver, aneurism in his left brain, parked at unusual places and letting people off at abandoned buildings in non-residential places. I've set my eyes on you long time. Why would an ordinary person like you become a murderer? Aha, I see there's a picture of your former family in your car that looks old but was polished means you left them but you miss them therefore couldn't help provide for them, so you doing this crime is not only beneficial for your own desire, just like me earning fees by picking at bad guys at you. Most importantly, what gives you away is your service number, which is 454437, too tedious for anyone's taste, obviously a fake, I suppose. Get out your smart phone and use your smart brain. Brilliant! A cabbie, no one will notice you as long as you didn't drive your cab into a wall, perfect scheme that no one will ever suspect. Now I see you are pointing your gun at my forehead right now, and my phone is in my office."

"There's barely anyone who would notice this little affair of you and me, because I'm just a nasty old cabbie, I'm just a silhouette and a forehead under the overhangs of the dull, bright spotlight rays of the city. I warn you, bastard, if you dare to accuse me of any sort of crime, I will shoot you in the head." His fierce eyes are definitely not a cabbie's, had I wasn't on this cab. How nice, another battlefield after the one before, now we are getting somewhere, maniac.

Sherlock Holmes was inhumanly calm.

"Oh, dull."

The cabbie's heart just skipped to a thousand beats away.

"I know a real gun when I see it."

His voice crushed one of my ribs, and I used to crush another one riding the bicycle, so I know what it feels like. But this time it's different; it's heartache, a strange, reliving kind of pain. I was actually worrying about Sherlock Holmes, the strangest deduction maniac I have ever met in my entire life.

You could have had yourself killed, fool.

He dropped his gun, or rather, lost his electrical toy to the ground.

"The last victim of yours was a smart one. Her mouth was probably muffled so she couldn't cry for help. But she planted her phone on you, and we found her tablet in her hotel, which has an app and we tracked down the precise location of her phone by just a click. It's constantly moving place to place, so a cab or a bus. Which one has the less people? Go figure. Next part is easy, you know where to find those high quality street cams on the lights, and where you can enlarge details and therefore the numbers on your vehical. By tracking down her locations via her tablet and looking at the endless amount but only one without a valid license on that passes a certain street and barely stops for pedestrians at a certain point of the day…Figuring out your identification code took us quite a while, but Lestrade needed a cabbie to go home, a cunning one, so that urged him to call you as his driver of the day. Look at that little panel that stores coins, your life was so nightmarish that you barely stop for pedestrians, and you probably have a sponsor behind you so you don't really open your wallet and check your belongings, so do speak. Opened it, you are doing it. Aha, here is a pink phone, the phone that we used to track you down with stickers on it, probably an anime lover who doesn't really earn her own money, because she could afford those phones but didn't buy a screen protector and phone stickers to protect the condition of it, because again that's not her own money, because those stickers are cheap and the corners are already worn. A broken button with a obvious crack on it, careless and immature. Smell of cheap-made perfume? Cares about appearances with her limited budget. Most likely does her nails often, because it smells like this nail place right around the corner. Mid twenty, judging by the style of…. Am I doing this again, John?"

He looked at me with his normal facial expression. That is, pale and bored.

I was shocked by this whole situation that I could barely open my mouth to speak. I pointed at the phone, and through the rearview mirror, I saw several police cars with their lights glaring at me, as if I'm the only one in the fog.

He was arrested right away and we watched those police cars drove away. The sun is setting already and our shadows are stretched like a couple of dough's with distorted corners. His tall figure is gigantic compares to my five feet height, and his attitude was so obviously conceited from the beginning to the end, dramatically different from when I first met him hours ago. It's the attitude of a case being solved, I suppose.

"Where are they heading?" I asked him although I already knew the answer. Just to see if he is real.

"To their own guilt. I always find normal people funny. They have all sorts of emotions, and they are always so balanced that it makes me mad. And, ahh, look at the sunset, isn't it perfect; you can't even see half of the sun because it was blocked by the buildings and the dusts. By the way, about the flat…."

At that time, a mixture of emotion of horror and affection struck me right on through. And that's when I started to have feelings for him. Not those feelings, of course not, but feelings that he will be a great companion to me.

He is so human sometimes that you could hardly believe that he is this deduction maniac, and so inhuman sometimes that you could just fancy slapping him in the face without him even flinch. He is not a human, I was so wrong. He is unique, just like he is the world's only consulting detective. He is Sherlock Holmes, belongs to no category whatsoever. He created his personality.

"…and the coffee, I don't like them sugary but I like them thick, thick as when you drink it you will fly to your very own mind palace. Milk should be always reachable, since we are sharing a fridge. Are you listening, doctor?"

I realized that I was being stupidly quiet and I moved up my eyes and met his. To my surprise, he is staring at me with….I don't know, normality?

Sherlock Holmes smiled for a quarter of a second and descended from his very own stage of deduction. Actually, descended and ascended to the stairs, and in a matter of seconds I found myself standing in his, no, our, living rooms.

I had a very abnormal feeling that this is going to be all fine.

Oh, don't laugh, who could have fancied more?


	3. The Moor

Chapter Three

The Moor

This is the second month of me living with Sherlock Homes, and using my poor intellect I deduce that he is a very relentless man.

Mrs. Hudson, our landlady living downstairs, is knocking on our door.

And seconds after the unanswered bell, there's a hole right on the doorknob that was painted in gold. It was dark and mysterious and filled with smoke.

"God! Sherlock?! What the bloody hell?" Blond head sticking out the side of the door. What a brave old lady she is. Somehow, she knows her way around him for some unknown reasons, and she is still sane after all this.

"Bored. Loveless. Smokeless. Need mental exercise." He answered in his monotonic voice as if he is talking through an empty can. He has my gun in hand; surrounding him are his wonderful creations of bullet holes, perfectly lined up in squares and circles. I'd rather go live in the vastness of the everlasting hell of horror than die in my own flat under the insanity of a bored detective.

"I'm putting this on your rent, young men!" She cried in the hallway and the slammed door bounced back out and refused to close completely.

"Why the hell is it plural? I have nothing to do with it!" I stretched my hands out, holding the newspapers.

"She thought you and I are doing it. It's called euphemism, put it in your vocabulary notebook." He remarks carelessly.

"What? You know we are not. Are we?" I said with a streak of disappointment.

"Gosh, what is it like in your funny little brain? It must be so boring and empty and unrealistic. There has been no murder committed, no burglary happened, and no cases for me to solve. Yesterday there was this Bluebell rabbit that glows in the dark, and I heard that Natto's in uproar. Oh, John, my dear John, give me some news about it. How is the little fairy doing? Feed me some information or I will cook my own eyeballs for some. And speaking of which, is it your turn or my turn to buy the milk? Oh life, life is so boring, breathing is boring, surviving will only necessitate you if you have something interesting to do, like what, waiting for something interesting to happen? And also….."

Want me to go on?

Yes, because what I'm going to tell you next is something you won't hear from anyone else, not even Lestrade, an officer who hates and loves Sherlock at the same time. But he still needs him, like all those people do when they run out of clues. But I'm not talking about Lestrade here, I'm talking about Sherlock and his affairs. Secrets that are never before known by humanity about Sherlock, should I say.

In the morning he often takes a five minutes shower in his bathroom, and I could even hear him humming some of those anonymous violin tunes. And then he locks himself in his bathroom for a few minutes to do his own grooming (I'm seriously fighting the impulse to giggle right now) and doing stuff to his hair (unconfirmed but where in London could you find a guy with dark brown hair with perfect curls like that? I'm not jealous, I'm not jealous at all). And then he comes out, looking all fresh and puffy, and with his hair dangling to his eyes, that's when Sherlock Holmes stops being a sociopath and change back to his human form.

"Where would you normally get your hair done?" One day, I was drinking coffee and eating grilled cheese with Sherlock focused on his newspaper.

"What do you mean 'get my hair done'?" He looks up from his newspaper, eyes looking all droopy and sleepless. He must've been working on that kidnapping case overnight.

"Like normal people cutting their hair once in a while, and if they don't it will grow out and looking all messy?" I learned a lot over the course of 30 days and I'm trying to get use to the fact that the things that he has no clue upon are the ones people do on a daily basis.

"Oh. I have an old friend of mine who was a former hairdresser, I think he's somewhere in this room….. Oh, he's on the top of the fireplace looking all cozy." He pointed his forks at the edge of the room.

There's a skull.

That's when I start to wonder the reliability of Sherlock Holmes. Oddly, I should have thought so a long time ago, as a perfectly normal human being. Unlike him sometimes, unchangeable and cold, like the coffee he made me two mornings ago. I was just back from a one-week healing trip abroad and in front of me was this coffee he made me that taste like water. I was filled with tiredness and rage.

"Sherlock, I understand that you are no ordinary type of human, but could you at least spare your friend….. Your flatmate a peace of mind and just make a cup of hot coffee with your always-hidden, other-side-of-the-moon, humanly heart?"

He was putting rosin on his violin bow, and looked up to me with his greenish eyes without responding. Staring in to them, my eyebrow loosened unexpectedly and my fist melted down back to the form of my hand. He put his fiddle down to where I'm usually sitting, eyes locked on me. There's definitely some blood activity going on in my face and I couldn't help staring at him back.

Silence.

"What's wrong?" Background is the tickly-tock of the clock and that's it. You can even hear the sound of a needle pulling thread. Rhetorical, or realistically saying, It's the sound of him fixing my broken and aching heart.

"I thought moment ago you were complaining about your coffee?" He asked twice.

"I.. I was?" Sherlock looked at me with amused expression and continue putting rosin on his expensive bow. I set the coffee down and took his violin. He swung his bow in the air like he always does and said: " Do you play any instrument?"

"I used to play the clarinet when I was a schoolboy." I said proudly.

"Oh, dull." The edge of his lips moved upward-as if he was smiling.

I started plugging his violin and tried to remember where to put my fingers and such, because I used to see my friend playing it. When I barely made out the tune of the Alphabet song, I glanced at Sherlock and realized that he was staring at me the whole time-again.

I don't remember what happened next after the staring incident, but I think I don't need to remember. It's not possible, isn't it, for me to be INTERESTED in Sherlock Holmes? I mean, I have been doubtful about myself before, but never in a way that is so downright flirtatious (to me) that it makes me want to do that again.

Just staring at him, with an idiotic smile on my face and a warm feeling in my heart. Just staring. Nothing else.

His dark, curly brown hair; his perfectly straight teeth; his hands stained with chemicals and his arms thin as one of those bamboo sticks you find in a Chinese restaurant. His smile, only once did I see him smiling, is when he was watching Telly and the people inside it was fighting over a questionably existed checkbook, as if he knew where he hell the main character hid it. To Sherlock Holmes, real people's life is a joke, and God knows what universe he lives in.

Mine. Because my mind is full of him.

It was all him. Not perfection. Not bad. Not unique. It was just him. Sherlock Holmes, the man that haunts me in my constant nightmares, only recently those dreams are filled with a face, not a battlefield. Is he substituting for my therapist?

Today, he told me that he got a case.

"Finally! John! My brain seems to be working again! My brother, Mycroft just texted me, said he's got a case in hand and South Korea was on the other line so he was like shut the hell up and hang up your damn phone I need to talk to the first female president about her…. Why would you want to know? And beep, beep, beepily, beep, up he hanged. You know what, the beeping of phones actually sounds quite different. You can always tell the old schooled once aside from the new ones from the lust and the residue of the sound quality of each beeps….."

I tuned him out right on time. What a thinking machine.

His brother Mycroft is the head of the government, when he is not too busy solving top-secret problems and acts as the head of the British Embassy and such. A self-proclaimed "minor of the British System" but actually a duke of it. "Would burn and bore and boil the heart out of you like a hot glue gun, just watch." I am starting to feel like quoting a certain person without a name now.

A certain thing that would symbolic him must be an umbrella. Beware of using it as a cane; you can become him, a less-deductive Sherlock.

After a week of dullness, the investigation started.

"Doesn't matter how damning my brother is, a week ago, he finally got me something for Christmas after two months. A case, a case, A CASE. A glow-in-the dark mutt roaring in the countryside. Or more precisely a hound. Ah, dull word choices by you dull people. I went down yonder and found out a few things. This little boy, well, he used to be a little boy. A fierce hound killed his dad on what the locales would call the Moor, and ever since that the hound has been haunting his dream and his real life. Every single time people tell him that it was just his mere imagination that the hound is actually just a wild dog and somebody else did the favor of sending his dad away on his endless venture. He would deny it, downright and ugly. He claims that the hound actually exists and he went down to the Moor a couple of times and saw the hound, still big and horrifying, with fearsome bloody red glow in both of his eyes henceforth the impossible-to-defeat hound that killed his dad. No one actually believed him, I mean it's human sentiment, nobody would believe in something that would harm them, let along something they didn't witness that would post a threat to their life. The little boy is in his twenties now and lives alone. Sigh, what a life it must have been for him!"

Sherlock Holmes acted as if he cares about sentiments and destinies and how human irrationalities work, because sometimes he needs to downgrade himself and be a normal person in order to find out the ugliest and dirtiest of truths.

I paused my connect-it game on my phone and put it down on the coffee table. Stretched my arms and my legs a bit and inquired: " Did he have more precise memories about the scene that happened years ago?"

"Good question! Although shallow but right on the point. I didn't see the man for a long time, so I didn't ask him what happened that night his father got killed. But a few words did pop up on his brain, or rather been in his brain for years and he just forgot to mention it because of their seemingly unimportant nature: Column, So".

"Well, if I say those words make sense, I am lying. What could it be then, if he remembers those words so precisely but yet so strangely arranged?" I asked.

"This is a scheme that is yet to be fully constructed, a topic that has not been discovered, and a glitch of our mind that is playing tricks on us. Every single questions and pauses in life are our mistakes, and what we must do is to perfect them and put an end to it. Say, I'm fancying a fieldtrip with my best man, would you like to show me some conscience and be that man and come along with me?" He creased the right side of his face like a little child. At that moment, he is no other a teenager who is looking for some pleasurable thing to do. But instead of cocaine, which Sherlock himself admitted that he used to dine on it like chicken breasts, he is craving deductions.

"Or if it's rather hard for you to understand, here is the line: to stop this relentless hound legend from invading the pureness of local textbooks, would you please come forth to achieve this seemingly far-fetched but life-bearing duty with me before sweeping change happens way too late from a humanity's standpoint?" He speculates my "humanness and foolishness' rather chillingly and nonchalantly.

I was wonderstruck by his sudden invitation to his inevitable world of crime solving, but facing his godlike figure and his way of talking, I could not and would not say no.

"Where to?" Upon entering the train station, I turned back and caught myself staring at the level of his chest. Maybe I should start wearing heels, hmm.

"Baskerville, where the Moor is and the hound incident took place." Right before we step onto the train, The God of Deduction whispers. God he is charming, and to be honest, he murders my self-esteem bare.

For a moment, life was just he and I. And yeah, a million other people crowded into one piece of machinery like cattle. London won't give us enough time for us to be alone, or is it just my conscience getting in the way. Don't get close to him; let yourself be, it says. Either way, standing amidst of the swaying people, sneaking looks at him, watching how the tip of his smile creases back into a seemingly frigid expression. I know how you hide and handles and try to control your human side, my endeared, foolish Sherlock Holmes.

Looking outside the blurred window that was apparently infected by colliding and ascending heat of the wave of humanity, I see moving buildings backing off as they were waving farewells, and instead of the city vibe you would normally get from London, switching back to your brain is the childhood memories you will often flashed back in your free times. It gets purer and more suburb-like as you go on. Upon every sense of life, purification can take place in matter of seconds, with the right time, right person and the right place.

Cue the mysterious and semi-dark tune that he hummed his way into my life.

We stopped by a small café shop after we got off the train. I heard words and phrases like "the gigantic hound", "work of the Lord", "most astonishing thing that has even happened." Beneath the surface of the seemingly bland life of suburbia, there is a shadow slowly advancing into Baskerville residence's daily routine. Like rain clouds that are unconsciously covering the whole place right now, the incredible hound have awoke the imaginary side of quite an amount of people.

In the rain, we asked the café manager, , a few questions, mainly impersonal but not useless either.

Sherlock had his coat collar up and sipping his semi-sweet latte as if he himself is not the food of the gods already.

"That poor mate, he hasn't seen much things in this world but this, and it was when he was just a little boy. According to him, every time he takes a walk in the Moor, the hound would appear. Not just your ordinary type of wild dogs or mutts, a gigantic hound with bloody red eyes. This is the story most people know, and you can pass this poor fellow's words as mere daydreaming. But get this, he says that the hound is just like the one that killed his father years ago, and every time he goes there he has the feeling that it is the exact one that he is facing. I know it sounds like some crazy head's muttering, but I take this man's word for granted. What could he be lying for?" The café manager handed me the napkin I was asking for a moment ago. "Ta." I said thankfully.

Sherlock's eyebrow lifted with interest: "Can you give me his address?" The café manager didn't even try to refuse; he jotted down some cursive notes on a yellowed piece of notepad and handed it to me.

I was dumbfounded for three seconds before I realized that I am the honorary colleague of the great detective, although he doesn't put himself underneath the spotlight much, I acknowledge him with my deepest admiration.

We kind of barged into the young man's house right before nightfall, and he didn't act that surprised. Apparently his place has been the visiting site of polices and detectives trying to look for possible answers of the mysterious hound and failed.

"I've inquired a handful of people today and a few days ago, but I still didn't gather enough information to get this case moving. Tell me, what did you see the night your father's death took place? Beside the few words you were telling me about." Sherlock Holmes drops himself on the edge of the chair the young fellow drew him.

"My dad was a lawyer who works overseas a lot, but never once in my life did he get associate into anything major. I mean he is not a famous lawyer and mainly takes open and shut finance disputes. I was playing along in the Moor one night. Then I heard footsteps and my father calling out for help. I realized something was wrong and turned my head and this gigantic hound was growling at me and my dad was slowly backing off. It has grayish brown furs, about one meter tall and roars like a lion. I screamed on the top of my lungs but the hound advanced and I don't want to describe the next part…" His voice started cracking and the next thing I know, Sherlock is standing up.

"How can a hound be a meter tall and roar like a lion?" I asked confusedly.

"I don't know, pretty sure I blacked out on scene. But all those years, Mr. Detective, all those years it has been like the worst that can happen to anyone. Column, So, these are the only two things I remember. The whole time I was conscious of the greatness of the gigantic hound, and the whole time I was screaming."

"And that's about enough information to get the investigation going, my friend. Thank you for the sugar cubes, I didn't like it a lot. We are going down tonight to the Moor to see the hound." Sherlock put his coffee mug down and eyeing me to leave.

"These are organic sugar I brought from , he is a neat man." He murmurs.

"But, Sherlock…" His silhouette was already outside the window. I didn't get to stay long and was forced to leave the young man behind with his nightmarish reality.

"Column, So. A strangely huge hound that could roar. That's about all we have here." I flattened my hand with barely any idea at all.

"And a thousand possible ways of a crime being committed." He answers. " Those words actually mean something. If one remembers it at such a clear degree in the flash between oblivion and real life, it must've meant something!"

"Wait, how did you know he was oblivious?"

"You see, but you do not observe. 'pretty sure I blacked out on scene' and 'the whole time I was screaming' shows that he wasn't completely blacked out and was rather confused about his situation. There must be an outside force that made him staying in a floating mode but not intense enough to be a completely coma. And those words, Column, So, they could be on the hound, or carved into a stone somewhere…"

There is suddenly a flash of light in both of his eyes.

"Tonight we are going down to the Moor and the truth, my friend, will be revealed."

"John, hand me my nicotine patch box. I want three, twice, in a row, now. Tobacco helps me think. Unable to sustain a smoking habit in London nowadays." He orders.

I did what he said.

Sherlock Holmes, with his overconfidence and his mysteriousness, he is strong enough to stand alone. If this is the case, what am I here with him for?

Staring at the back of his curly brown hair resting at the head of the chair. There are one, two, three, four patches on his arm at the same time. As his only friend, there are only so many things I know about him, and so many things that are yet to be retrieved from their hidden palace, and something that I will never know.

"Get under the cover, John." He points at the bed, with no intention of going back to his room.

Coat off, shirt off, hat off. I also hear the echoing sounds emitting out of his mind. I'm not a very sensitive person when it comes to intuition, but I think at least I know what one percent of his mind is thinking.

And I think I know what his dire need is now.


End file.
